Drivers of Rising Housing Allowance Claimant Numbers: Evidence from the Irish Private Rented Sector

Recent years have seen growing concern among policy makers about difficulties in controlling the numbers of claimants and cost of housing allowances, which are now the main state housing support for low-income households in most Western European countries. This issue has raised particular concerns in the Republic of Ireland where the numbers of claimants of rent supplement, the principal state housing support for unemployed private renting households, have climbed steadily since the 1980s despite a marked concurrent reduction in unemployment rates. This paper attempts to explain this conundrum using administrative data on all claimants in 2005 and 2004. It reveals that although the traditional drivers of demand for this benefit—rising unemployment and lone-parent families—have become less significant in recent years, they have been replaced by a new driver, rising immigration. In addition, labour market activation measures have proved counterproductive. They have incentivised part-time, rather than full-time, work and consequent continued dependence on rent supplement.     

RUNWAY EXTINCTION WITH AND WITHOUT SHOCK AS A FUNCTION OF ACQUISITION REWARD MAGNITUDE.

32 ALBINO RATS WERE GIVEN RUNWAY TRAINING WITH EITHER LARGE OR SMALL REWARD. WHEN RUNNING SPEEDS STABILIZED, EXTINCTION BEGAN WITH 1/2 THE SS IN EACH REWARD GROUP RECEIVING SHOCK IN THE UNBAITED GOAL BOX. AS IN PREVIOUS STUDIES, THE LARGE REWARD GROUPS EXTINGUISHED MORE RAPIDLY THAN THE SMALL REWARD GROUPS AND THE SHOCKED SS MORE RAPIDLY THAN THE NONSHOCKED. HOWEVER, NO SIGNIFICANT INTERACTION WAS FOUND BETWEEN ACQUISITION REWARD MAGNITUDE AND EXTINCTION SHOCK TREATMENT. THE RESULTS ARE INTERPRETED IN TERMS OF THE HYPOTHESIZED MEDIATING EMOTIONAL RESPONSE PRODUCED BY BOTH NONREWARD AND SHOCK. (FRENCH SUMMARY) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

EXERGY ANALYSIS OF AMMONIA-BASED SOLAR THERMOCHEMICAL POWER SYSTEMS

The reversible dissociation of ammonia is one of the candidate reactions for use in closed loop solar thermochemical energy storage systems. The major determinant of achievable performance for such a system is the degree of thermodynamic irreversibility associated with the heat recovery process. Exergy analysis of a semi realistic 30 MPa isobaric system has revealed that the major irreversibilities occur within the exothermic reactor and the counterflow heat exchanger between ingoing and outgoing reactants. In this study, optimum reactor control yielded exergetic efficiencies up to 71%, which should translate to overall solar to electric conversion efficiencies of around 20%.     

Texture and Storage Stability of Processed Beefsticks as Affected by Glycerol and Moisture Levels

Ground beef-based beefsticks were produced with glycerol levels of 0, 2, and 4%, and dried to water activity levels of 0.90 and 0.85. Samples were analyzed by uniaxial compression and colorimetry after production and after 52°C storage for 1, 2, 3 or 4 wk. Deformability modulus, percent recoverable work, relaxation properties, and relative lightness were calculated. Glycerol, as well as water, acted as an effective textural plasticizer. Reductions in modulus and relaxation parameters due to glycerol addition were in the range of 30–40%. Glycerol can thus effectively be used to adjust physical properties without compromising stability. Higher moisture samples were relatively more elastic, as determined by recoverable work. High temperature storage reduced modulus, solidity and percent recoverable work (20–70%) in all samples.     

AMPERES: A REAL-TIME FAULT MONITORING AND DIAGNOSIS KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEM FOR SPACE POWER SYSTEMS

A real-time fault monitoring and diagnosis knowledge-based system (KBS) has been developed for space power systems to save costly operational manpower and to achieve reliable space power system operation. The developed KBS, called AMPERES (autonomously managed power-system extendible real-time expert system), was developed using the autonomously managed power system (AMPS) test facility currently installed at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The approaches taken for AMPERES are generic and should be applicable for other space power systems. A sensor value validation method based on causal relations (CRs) and their interrelations within the sensor redundancy graphs (SRG) has been developed and applied in AMPERES to increase the confidence in the validity of the sensor values and consequently in the results of the fault diagnosis. The validation results also yield essential information for fault diagnosis identifying the existence of a potential fault and the location or the extent of the fault. A disturbance interrelation analysis graph (DIAG) scheme has been developed to characterize the fault diagnosis problems clearly and to perform the fault monitoring and diagnosis tasks effectively by explicitly showing the diagnosis reasoning paths. The DIAG approach also enables the fault diagnosis KBS to describe a fault in several different abstraction levels and in different component granularities.     

印度对中国电信设备戒心重重造成电信设备厂商损失数以10亿美元计的营业额

iSuppli公司认为,在过去6个月,印度对于中国电信设备的不信任感与日俱增.据中国电信设备厂商华为技术和中兴通讯,印度政府开始阻挠2月中旬该国向这两家厂商发出的采购订单,所采取的一系列行动导致这些电信设备厂商损失了数以10亿美元计的营业收入,而且导致印度电信服务提供商的项目严重拖延.     

The nutrition and health benefits of yoghurt

Yoghurt is one of the most popular fermented milk products worldwide and has gained widespread consumer acceptance as a healthy food. It provides an array of nutrients in significant amounts, in relation to its energy and fat content, making it a nutrient-dense food. In particular, yoghurt can provide the body with significant amounts of calcium in a bioavailable form. Furthermore, yoghurt has many health benefits beyond the basic nutrition it provides, such as improved lactose tolerance, a possible role in body weight and fat loss, and a variety of health attributes associated with probiotic bacteria.     

Dynamic rules for due-date assignment

This paper presents two new dynamic due-date assignment rules which utilize shop congestion information. The new rules estimate job flowtime based on a sampling of recently completed jobs. These rules are compared with other established flowtime estimate models on the criterion of due-date performance via computer simulation. To evaluate the robustness of the rules, an experimental design with three different queue sequencing heuristics and two different shop balance levels was used. The results of this investigation clearly indicate that flowtimes from recently completed jobs provide very useful information for establishing effective due-dates in a job shop environment. In addition it is shown how the use of particular sequencing rules greatly increases the precision of flowtime estimates.